7/6/2019: what i’ve been playing

Hello friends. I’ve been busy dealing with severe allergy attacks that have left me in a lot of pain and dealing with blurry eyesight, plus the usual bipolar brain shit (not fun). So in an attempt at keeping my thought process positive, I would do another “games I’ve been playing” post.

Hell Night

This game is pretty cool. It’s a 1998 Playstation game that combines two aesthetics that I really love: point-and-click exploring loaded with 90s pre-rendered CGI, and blocky corridors with warped textures. Now, while I liked it, I was also very disappointed with it.

Let me explain: the plot of Hell Night is a young man getting onboard the nearest subway car after being harassed on the street by some religious zealots. The car derails, killing everyone inside except for him, a teenage girl named Naomi who follows you around during the game, and a serial killer on the run named Kamiya. And while the main character and Naomi are figuring out what the fuck just happened, a monster tears his way in, gunning after the two of them, so they run away. They run to the end of the tunnel, where a bunch of special ops soldiers are waiting for them, ready to gun them down. But they get distracted by the monster, which kills all but one of them. And while all that’s going on, the MC and Naomi take off into the sewers, which then leads to the entrance of a secret underground city called the Tokyo Mesh. The Mesh was built from the remains on an abandoned military base, which has since been taken over by a cult, and is home to its members, along with refugees and sketchy people. And so now the object of the game is to escape from the Mesh, while also being endlessly pursued by the monster. There’s also some bits involving Cosmic Horror, if you’re into that.

Now, if you’re like me, that concept sounds cool as shit. A game that combines horror with slight Cyberpunk/Kowloon Walled City elements and has the visual gestalt of the games in the back of Gamefan magazine that I would fantasize about playing as a kid. And like I said, it’s good. But the problems come in when you realize that the Mesh is not as fleshed out as it should be for a game like this. NPCs don’t really do much or have a whole lot of character beyond saying a couple of goofy lines, giving/receiving items, or getting killed. The Mesh itself is mostly a series of dark corridors with generic, unmarked doors leading you to the characters, or to completely empty rooms. I felt that there should have been better care taken with the narrative structure of the game.

The monster is pretty well done. The game does feel like a precursor to Alien Isolation. There’s puzzle solving and exploration, all while having to avoid a single enemy capable of killing you instantly. And unlike most horror games, this monster does not just lumber towards you; this motherfucker will full-on sprint after you from a dark hallway, scaring the shit out of you. And by “you,” I mean “me.”

But then around the mid-way point, the monster either stops showing up, or due to the stage design, is so easy to avoid that he becomes more of a formality than a threat. And then the end of the game comes, where he becomes the single most annoying thing you can deal with, causing me to spend well over an hour in a single area, unable to bypass him. It’s hard to scare me when you’re bothering me.

All that being said though, the game is still cool, and you should probably fire it up in your emulator of choice.

Samurai Shodown V Special

Gabi and I have been playing some matches on Fightcade together, in addition to me taking on random players here and there. My Ukyo is mostly untouchable.

Super Mario Maker 2

It’s probably counter-intuitive to buy a game completely based around level design while I’m actively working on my own game, which is currently taking way too fucking long to finish for my liking. But whatever, I’m having fun with it, and people are liking my stages, which gives me a bit of relief knowing that if people are liking what I’m doing with Mario, then they’ll also probably enjoy Slimegirl.

Go play my levels:

And that’s pretty much about it for now. Mostly needed to take this time out to be positive, and not let the bad energy get to me moreso than it has this week. I’m about two months away from one full year of sobriety, so beating the bad brains to avoid falling back into that pit is a good thing. Don’t know what my next post will be; maybe a Developer Diary, or I can try and dig out some more old retail shit besides these two lanyards I have laying around my house. But until then, see you around.